For the most part, we've been pretty good about keeping JRuby
discussions off the ruby-talk list, because in general it seemed like
the right thing to do. But lately, it seems like people are missing
information about what JRuby can do, how complete the implementation is,
and where we're going with it. So I'd like to start talking more about
JRuby on this mailing list.
I'll start it off with a little introduction to JRuby and what it can do
right now.
JRuby is Ruby for the JVM, also known as the Java Virtual Machine. It's
written mostly in Java, though there's some libraries written in Ruby,
and we include the entire Ruby 1.8.x (currently 1.8.5) stdlib.
In the 1.0 line, JRuby operates primarily as an interpreter comparable
to the standard Ruby 1.8.x implementation.
In 1.1, JRuby includes a 100% complete Ruby-to-bytecode compiler, that
increases performance substantially.
JRuby runs Rake, RubyGems, Rails, Mongrel, and nearly all pure-Ruby
libraries and apps that are out there. Compatibility has gotten closer
and closer to 100% over the past year.
There are a number of organizations rolling out real production Rails
apps on JRuby rather than on regular Ruby, usually because JRuby fits
better into Java-oriented organizations, but increasingly because JRuby
offers libraries, stability, and performance characteristics in many
ways better than running on the standard implementation. It's not better
across the board, but it's starting to be better in very important areas.
JRuby 1.0.1 is the current release. 1.0.2 is going to be released within
the next two weeks, along with a beta of 1.1.
What more would folks like to know about?
- Charlie